Trump-backed candidate declared winner of Honduras presidential election

Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura has won Honduras’ presidential election, the country’s electoral authorities announced Wednesday afternoon, ending a weeks-long countdown.

The election result continued to tilt to the right in parts of Latin America, just a week after Chile chose far-right politician José Antonio Kast as its next president.

Asfura, of the conservative National Party, received 40.27% of the vote on November 30, edging out four-time candidate Salvador Nasralla of the conservative Liberal Party, who finished with 39.39% of the vote.

Asfura won his second bid for the presidency, after he and Nasralla were elected. elbow to elbow during a lengthy vote count that fueled international concern over the Central American country’s fragile electoral system.

As of Tuesday evening, a number of election officials and candidates were already fighting and contesting the election results. Meanwhile, supporters at Asfura’s campaign headquarters erupted in joy.

“Honduras: I am ready to govern,” Asfura, former mayor of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, wrote in a statement. post on shortly after the results were published. “I won’t let you down.”

The results are a rebuke to the current left-wing leader and her Democratic Socialist Party for Liberty and Refoundation, known as LIBRE, whose candidate finished in third place with 19.19 percent of the vote.

Asfura presented himself as a pragmatic politician, highlighting his popular infrastructure projects in the capital. President Trump endorsed the 67-year-old conservative just days before the vote, saying he was the only Honduran candidate the U.S. administration would work with.

“If he doesn’t win, the United States won’t spend much money, because bad leadership can only bring catastrophic results to any country,” Mr. Trump wrote. Social truth.

Late last month, Mr. Trump also forgiven former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández – a member of the National Party – for drug and arms trafficking, which allowed him to leave a US federal prison. The US president claimed that Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly”, but his decision drew criticism from some members of both parties.

Nasralla claimed the election was fraudulent and demanded a recount of all votes just hours before the official results were announced.

On Tuesday evening, he addressed Mr. Trump in a message on If he is truly worthy of your support, if he has clean hands, if he has nothing to fear, then why won’t he allow every vote to be counted?

He and other opponents of Asfura have argued that Mr. Trump’s last-minute support was an act of election interference that ultimately swung the vote results.

The surprisingly tumultuous election was also marred by slow vote counting, which fueled even more accusations.

The Central American nation was stuck in limbo for more than three weeks due to election authorities delaying vote counting, and at one point was paralyzed after a special count of the final vote tally was called, fueling warnings from international leaders.

Ahead of the announcement, Organization of American States Secretary General Albert Rambin on Monday issued an “urgent appeal” to Honduran authorities to complete a special tally of final votes before the Dec. 30 deadline. The Trump administration has warned that any attempt to obstruct or delay the electoral count would have “consequences.”

For incumbent and progressive President Xiomara Castro, the election marked a political turning point. She was elected in 2021 on the promise of reducing violence and eradicating corruption.

She was part of a group of progressive Latin American leaders who were elected about five years ago on a hopeful message of change, but are now excluded after failing to realize their vision. Castro said last week that she would accept the election results even after claiming that Mr. Trump’s actions in the election amounted to an “electoral coup.”

But Eric Olson, an independent international observer of the Honduran elections with the Seattle International Foundation, and other observers said the rejection of Castro and his party was so definitive that they had little room to challenge the results.

“Very few people, even within LIBRE, believe they won the election. What they will say is that there was fraud, that there was intervention by Donald Trump, that we should destroy the election and vote again,” Olson said. “But they don’t say ‘we won the election.’ It’s clear that’s not the case.”